If, for instance, an estate were left to trustees, with an obligation to redeem captives in the custody of the Dey of Algiers, or to give medical care to persons who should return from the Holy Land afflicted with leprosy, and to apply the rest of the revenue to their own enjoyment, Parliament would hardly consider that, if there were no captives in Algiers, and no pilgrims afflicted with leprosy, the whole income would be rightly applied as if it were the private estate of the trustees. But let us again listen to Lord Cairns. In speaking of a title to ecclesiastical property, Lord Cairns says:—
In the hottest debates on that subject there was always one point which every person admitted, and is quite sufficient for my present purpose. It was always admitted that so long as the corporate body which possessed the title to ecclesiastical property remains, so long as the property is not greater in amount than can be usefully applied by that corporate body. … there is no right of principle on which Parliament can interfere to alienate property of that kind.[1]
But this case is not only modified, it is entirely altered, if the nation has changed its views in regard to the application of funds. Supposing William of Wykeham had founded a public college at Oxford, on the condition that the monks or scholars should pray for his soul, and sing mattins, the statesmen and legislators of Elizabeth would not have thought themselves precluded from a different appropriation of the funds, even were the masses rightly performed, and the mattins and vespers regularly celebrated.
- ↑ Hansard, vol. clxxxviii. June 24, 1867.
